I just finished reading/skimming a book about growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness. It’s written by a young woman who is around my age. I read the beginning, which was kind of slapstick (”haha, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that?”), but then the book started to get serious and I had to read faster and then just started skipping large chunks. I do not think I am ready to read that book in detail. It hits too close to home– which is funny, because I was not raised in a religious family. I actually turned to religion in my teens because fundamentalist Christianity offered more of a loving environment than I had at home. Oh, so sad, but true.
“Falling away from God” and deciding you don’t believe in a religion or the Bible-God anymore is a special kind of experience… It’s like finding out you were the victim of a huge intricate con. It’s a great experience-metaphor for what happened to me later in my twenties, as I started feeling like my parents deliberately tricked me into not being as angry as I should have been at them. Really, I think this is just what happens when you get more experience, grow older, and see things in a different light. You realize that all was not what it appeared to be, and damn it how could you have not seen that, how could you have been so stupid, but oh well, at least you know now. So you try to take comfort in your own self (if you can sense it), and keep on going.
I was thinking that if I wrote as honestly as Kyria Abrahams did in “I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed”, I would offend just about everyone I know. Then I realized that that is not truth– it’s just a fear. It’s just a fear that all the people in the world are ready to kick you out the door if you breathe a word of honesty in their direction– if you tell them something real about yourself. That fear of abandonment governed my actions for a long time, and I am sure it still does to some extent, even if I can’t see it clearly. It’s not something easily gotten rid of.
I have my best friend Jen to thank for kind of weaning me out of that fear in my early twenties, when we were roommates and I had to learn how to have a confrontation over something like the moldy ramen in the kitchen sink and not see it as impending Friendship-Armageddon.
I was just looking at Kyria Abrahams’ website, and found this post with a video of a Jehovah’s Witness girl talking about her religion… it just slays me. Reminds me of some of my relatives, who I used to want to rescue from their family, to just run in and whisk them away, and take them to the safe, secular city– it would be dramatic, like the SWAT team moving in to save hostages from a rapidly deteriorating standoff between terrorists and law enforcement. At some point I realized I couldn’t “save” them, and more than they can Save me. Oh, the irony!
5 Comments
i, for one, am absolutely fascinated by The Truth As You Experienced It. whoever and whatever you and it may be.
:)
I’ll have to think about reading that book. I could imagine that it’d be very uncomfortable. It sounds like the exact same experience every one of my friends went through as they grew up in that cult. I just happened to luck out because being a book-loving science geek turned me right around without the mess. I don’t know why it went that way – I still get the feeling most of my old friends think it’s “the truth”, they just can’t live with it. And they don’t seem much interested when I try to put them at ease by explaining how it’s SO NOT the truth.
I *could* just be terrible at explaining things.
We’ve got some friends who are Jehovah’s Witness. Fellow parents, totally “normal” looking and acting. You might never know it, except that they are obliged to turn down all celebrations for birthdays, holidays, etc. We really like them, but I don’t know how representative they are of their religion. I’m guessing not very.
Julia got invited along to their sole annual church celebration last year. There were readings from Revelation. Talk about partying like it’s 1999.
Great post Jess. Funny, ’cause I just watched the dvds “Jesus Camp” and “Religulous” – both great films in their own right, and they ask a lot of questions with regards to Christianity and religion in general.
It’s difficult, as I can somewhat relate, being surrounded by coworkers and family, and some who are very close to me who simply are gripped by religion and have no courage to question it at least. Still, i’m very confident in my own beliefs and views, which can be difficult as a “minority”, when it comes to personal belief systems.
Steve– that was ME in Jesus Camp! It was exactly like that, except it was a west coast version where we weren’t taught to speak in tongues. Other than that… yeah. It was really sad to watch the film as an adult and realize I used to be a tiny kid like that, being told those same things, by adults who should know better than to manipulate children in such an extreme way. I know parents who are religious, but explain their belief system to their kids and allow them to choose, inasmuch as it’s possible for a little kid to “choose” when their parents are setting a particular example. But this method is far preferable to the unrelenting brainwashing… Jesus Camp just chilled me to the bone.
I’ll have to check out Religious… haven’t seen that one yet.
Ballookey– I was a full-on bookworm too, and I am absolutely sure that helped me. I’ve actually thought a lot about which things helped me be as “well adjusted” as I am, considering what type of upbringing I had, and at one point I had decided it was books that saved my life… there are other factors too, I am sure, but… I think books give a kid some kind of armor. I think literacy provides a necessary escapism for children, without which they might feel much, much more helpless than they already do. Drawing horses and princess and reading books were the only forms of escape I had!
Post a Comment